


Making Use of the Time We Have

by ourraeofsunshine



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, M/M, Nightmares, Pre-graduation but they get together anyway, Sharing a Bed, The Haus ghost try to get zimbits together, The Usual Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 13:44:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18740242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourraeofsunshine/pseuds/ourraeofsunshine
Summary: “Bittle?” The moonlight coming through Jack’s window bathes the room in a soft glow, and Bitty can’t breathe for an entirely different reason. The sheets pool around Jack’s waist as he sits up in the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Bitty watches the smooth skin flicker in and out of darkness. His eyes trail Jack’s hand as he runs it down his chest, imagines fingers tangling in the short, soft hairs he knows are there.





	Making Use of the Time We Have

When he wakes, Bitty is covered in thick sweat even as the wind beats sharply against his window, threatening to get in. His heart races and stomach curls as he takes in his surroundings, the ice skates by the closet door, the dim blue light from the side of his laptop where he left it charging overnight, the shadowy box of his desk in the corner. Everything is as it should be, and yet he can’t help the chill creeping up his spine.

The dream had been unusual. It isn’t often he has nightmares and none tend to be very realistic, mostly involving a faceless struggle between someone bigger or a serial killer chasing him down a dark hospital hallway after Ransom and Holster made him watch that movie.

But tonight, tonight had felt very real, a series of what could’ve beens and what might still be flickering across his dreamscape. The boys going back to the hotel after an away game, finding Jack on the bathroom floor with an empty pill bottle. Jack racing towards Bitty for a celly after a goal only to get hit in some freak accident and all Bitty can do is watch as Jack falls into range of a blade and slices his neck clean across, blood pooling on the ice. Jack going to buy Bitty butter like he did last week and getting murdered at the Murder Stop and Shop.

Bloody vignettes, one after the other, and Bitty sits in his bed feeling something incredibly wrong in the Haus, an echo of death stinking up the halls. He wonders if Rans and Holster were right about the ghost after all.

There’s a creak in the hall outside his door, and he grabs for Senor Bun from where he’s fallen to the floor. Bitty’s heart beats louder as he pushes back the sheets and gently steps to the cold floor. Although Bitty hasn’t believed in monsters under his bed since he was in diapers, he feels a chill on the back of his ankles, gentle as an exhale, and jumps forward. He won’t look behind him. Whatever he does, he will not look behind him.

Bitty walks to the door, no longer as scared of what’s ahead as he is of what’s behind, and grasp the door handle. He slips through the door and hovers in the hall outside Jack’s room. From Bitty’s room, the floor aches, a long creaked reaching for Bitty. He pushes open Jack’s door and closes it loudly behind him, leaning against the solid wood as he breathes in and out.

“Bittle?” The moonlight coming through Jack’s window bathes the room in a soft glow, and Bitty can’t breathe for an entirely different reason. The sheets pool around Jack’s waist as he sits up in the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Bitty watches the smooth skin flicker in and out of darkness. His eyes trail Jack’s hand as he runs it down his chest, imagines fingers tangling in the short, soft hairs he knows are there.

“Are you okay?” Jack asks when Bitty says nothing. Bitty’s fingers ache where they are wrapped around Senor Bun, so he holds his stuffed animal to his chest.

“Dream,” Bitty says so softly it may as well be a whisper. “Bad dream.” He presses deeper into the door.

Jack watches him, propped up on his hands, eyes not missing a thing. He catches the slight tremors in Bitty’s shoulders and knows they’re not entirely from the cold and not entirely from the dreams. He flicks back one corner of his sheets and pulls up his mother’s quilt that has rested at the end of the bed since he moved in so many years ago.

“Come here,” he commands gently, and watches even as Bitty pushes away from the door and approaches the bed, too drained to be tentative. Bitty crawls in beside him, and Jack lays back, tugging Bitty to his side and wrapping and arm around the boy. Bitty squeaks but buries into the warmth of Jack’s chest.

“Tell me,” Jack commands again.

“Jack…” And it all spills out. Seeing Jack’s lifeless body on the hotel bathroom floor, the pool of red on the ice, the bruised face and split lip outside the grocery. Watching vultures pick at his lifeless body. How afraid Bitty is that when Jack’s no longer living across the hall, Bitty will no longer be able to keep Jack safe from the vultures outside with their cameras and headlines.

“And then I woke up and my room was so cold and dark and  _empty_. Jack, I—” Bitty buried his face in Jack’s armpit, and Jack stroked his free hand through Bitty’s hair and down the back of his neck.

“I don’t want to lose you,” Bitty whispers wetly. His hold on Jack tightens before loosening altogether as Bitty gives up with a sigh.

“You’re not going to lose me,” Jack says, and he means it. He’s not the boy he once was. Samwell, the team, his boys, he has them now in ways he didn’t have anybody, not even Parse, back then. At some point in the past four years, he realizes, he allowed himself to have this life. A life with friends and inside jokes and fun and pie.

At some point in the last four years, he realizes, he grew up.

He stills his hand on the back of Bitty’s head and gazes down at the mop of blond hair. “Are you warm enough?” Bitty sighs but nods into his chest.

“Yes, Captain.” And Jack tightens the quilt anyway before sliding his hand down Bitty's back and tugging his thigh up over Jack's legs. It's far more intimate than anything they've ever done, more than Bitty's allowed while sitting close together during movie marathons or pressed hip to hip against the wall at parties. 

"I wish I could keep you safe," Bitty whispers, and Jack feels so full of love, so proud of who he has become to be a man worthy of this.

"Bittle," he breathes. "Bittle." And maybe it’s because he’s got so little time with Bitty left. Maybe the nerve and control that Jack has been holding so tightly inside him finally snaps. Maybe he doesn’t want to leave Samwell with any loose ends. He doesn’t want to leave and wonder what could’ve been.

Whatever it is, it’s strong enough to make Jack roll over and press himself into Bitty, lips finding the boy's beneath him. Bitty's hands grasp at Jack's chest and curl into the soft hairs there. Jack presses him into the mattress, rolling his hips once before pulling away.

Half of his face is illuminated in the moonlight, every bit as gorgeous as the first day Bitty saw him almost two years before but so much softer, gentle even. Bitty runs his thumb over Jack's strong cheekbone and follows his jawline down then up and taps his bottom lip. Jack pulls one hand free from beneath Bitty and rest it against his cheek before leaning back down and kissing him again. And again and again. 

"Jack," Bitty finally says when time has gone and the dark room becomes a deep blue. "Jack."

"Eric." And Jack loves him so so much and it's too much but he wants more.

"You bought me an oven," Bitty says even later when the blue has become gray. Bitty's curled back up against Jack and trembles as the hand runs up and down his bare back, their clothes scattered to the floor.

"It was more of a team effort," Jack tells him fondly, other arm tucked under his head as his eyes follow the lines of Bitty’s body, trying to remember as much as he can about this moment before the Haus comes to life and they have to move on.

"Jack, you bought me an  _oven_." Bitty sits up, because he can't handle this. It's too much, too fast. Jack's eyes track his movements, and he wraps a hand around the back of Bitty’s neck and pulls him back down for a deep kiss.

“I did,” he says softly. “I got you an oven, so you would be happy.” And it means more than he’s really saying, and Bitty knows because he starts to cry and kiss Jack harder.

“Jack,” he gasps between kisses and breaths and tears. He crawls onto Jack’s lap and wraps his fingers around the back of Jack’s neck. “Jack.”

Later, the sun is risen far higher than when Jack usually has left for his run, and he lays awake even as his boy finally sleeps. His legs taps back and forth, restless from being in bed so long.

He hears Shitty getting up first, slugging through their shared bathroom to brush his teeth so he can study for finals before Lardo wants to hang. Ransom wakes next and trudges down the stairs to start his first coffee of the day. Fifteen minutes later, he’s trudging back up the stairs to wake Holster who has never done a single thing quietly in his life.

Bitty shifts when the stomping over their heads becomes too loud to sleep through.

“Oh,” he says and jolts up, pulling the sheets to his chest as if they hadn’t bared their souls to one another mere hours before. “The boys are up,” he says and looks to Jack, nervously. “I guess I should go make them breakfast.”

Jack smiles and Bitty looks around for his clothes, then spotting them, tries to maneuver his way towards the floor without showing Jack any skin.

“Bits,” Jack says.

“I was thinking pancakes,” Bitty chatters rapidly, reaching for his boxers, “because Ransom has his hardest test tomorrow and needs all the food he can get before he locks himself in the attic. Maybe blueberry pancakes since I just still have a pint of blueberries left from last weekend.” Bitty slides his sleep pants on over his boxers and crouches down to peek under the bed for his shirt.

“I wonder if there will be enough? If the frogs come over, I might need to run to the store. I guess I should run to the store just in case.” He finds his shirt on Jack’s desk chair and blushes when he grabs it.

“Bits,” Jack says. Bitty stills, then slowly turns around. “Stay, Bits. Stay.”

“But the boys…”

“They can feed themselves.”

“But I’ll only see them for a little while longer and then they’re gone for the summer. And Shitty is gone for forever. And he should have as much cooking as he wants because next fall—”

“Bits.” Jack wraps Bitty’s hands in his and pulls him in, settling the smaller boy between his legs.

“And you,” Bitty breathes, eyes wetter than they were moments before. Jack tugs him down until he can press a soft kiss to Bitty’s lips.

“I’ll visit, Bits. An-And now I know that you… Now it’s _you_ , Bitty,” Jack tells him, raising Bitty’s hands to his lips. “You’re not going to lose me.” Bitty swallows heavily and wraps his arms around his big, sweet hockey player. He buries his face in Jack’s neck and breathes him in. His beautiful, kind, loving boy.

“In fact,” Jack says after giving Bitty a moment to process. “I want to see you this summer. I want to come see you or, or fly you up to Providence? You can help me with the kitchen.” He smiles sweetly up at Bitty who kisses his boy again, grinning so wide it’s mostly teeth.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?” Jack asks.

“Okay,” Bitty promises.

**Author's Note:**

> Drafted this quickly at work today since I had nothing to do. It hasn't been edited and it didn't really turn out how I wanted, but I just wanted to get it out so I can stop thinking about it and go to bed. Hope you enjoy!


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